Lola Taubman - December 22, 2009

The Uprising

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Agi talks about sorting the clothes.

Yeah, Agi was working in the barracks so I saw her whenever we stopped picking up things. And she, she was--I don't know if it was in her barrack, I have to ask her, the pharmacists found the medicines and sorted them out. I had twin cousins from Izvor where my father was born and my grandmother lived there and uh, they were, they were un...unidentical twins. One worked in the crematorium taking the dead bodies into the oven. And the other, they did experiments on him. They put a little uh, a little uh, a little uh, what would you call it? A little dish that had gas in it, they would light a match to it to see how the body would react to it. And he survived, but he only lived to be about forty-two. He died in Israel, never had any children. And the one who worked in the crematorium, he was shot in the uprising.

I was just going to ask you if you were there for the uprising.

Yes, our, our barrack was right next--there was a doctor from Munkacs who used to remove the gold fillings and the crowns. You knew about that.

Mm-hm.

Yeah, and uh, uh, so we were told that somebody smuggled in guns and they were going to have an uprising. And they did, but in the meantime they were all killed. And did you know that, that some--I don't know whether the earlier ones or the later ones were tattooed on their forehead, in case they leave that people should know who they were.

Daughter: So they could never say directly what happened, they would only ever be killed, those people in that work detail.

'Cause they didn't kill them right away.

Daughter: They worked until they couldn't work anymore, but they would never let them out because they were the ones with that tattoo on their forehead.

I've never heard that.

Also something that they would change every few months, they would kill the, the existing ones...

Right, the Sonderkommando, yes.

...and get new ones.

Yeah. There was a woman involved in that. A woman was involved...

Yes, the one that came with the flowers from Czechoslovakia.

Right.

Yeah, she, she--you remember that?

Daughter: Mm-hm.

Yeah, she was hiding the flowers and she said she's not going to go like a lamb, so they killed her.